Not Yours
by Baxaronn
Summary: Jounouchi and Kaiba are being forced to work on a project for their history class together. Neither of them are particularly happy about this. Rating is for cursing. It is extremely unlikely that I will complete this; apologies to whom it may concern.
1. Chapter 1

Hello, everyone, here is a story. I suggested this story would need an explanation in the description, and here it is:

I do not generally write pairing fic of any kind. However, this is supposed to end up being Jounouchi/Kaiba. I choose to do it this time around because a) I thought perhaps I should try doing it at least once, and b) because this particular pairing makes absolutely no sense to me. I know it's rather popular, but I personally have a very hard time imagining them feeling anything but hatred for each other. Thus, I am interested in trying to set up a scenario that would make it seem plausible to me. Because I'm approaching it from this perspective, though, anticipate any romance stuff taking a very long time to appear. I really don't know yet how it's going to happen, but I'm gonna try, dammit! It'll happen, I _sweeeaaaar it too yoooou_.

Even if it doesn't end up being a satisfactory romantic relationship, though, I hope it's interesting enough besides that you'll like it. Please enjoy.

* * *

Thursday

"Fucking damnit!" Jounouchi exclaims, clutching his assignment sheet so hard he almost tears it in half. "Why am I paired with that asshole?"

"That's some terrible luck, dude. On your side and his," Honda says, eyeing his own sheet with vague interest. Jounouchi snatches the page out of his hand and finds the names handwritten on the top in red ink – "Honda & Ohno." Ohno, while not a particularly interesting person, is basically a decent human being.

"You'll be able to work with him. I'm not gonna get this done if I have to do it with friggin' _Kaiba_!"

"Did you even notice that I insulted you?"

"Yes, I just chose to ignore it."

"Classy."

"I'm sure it won't be too hard," says Yugi, ever the optimist. "Kaiba's very serious about school. I'm sure he'll be willing to cooperate with you, for the sake of the project if nothing else."

Jounouchi crumples up Honda's assignment sheet and tosses it at his head. It hits him in the ear and falls to the floor. "Yeah, that's easy for you to say when you're partner is your best friend and a hot girl at the same time. My partner is an ugly boy and a stupid asshole," he says to Yugi. Poor naïve Yugi, so willing to see the good in everybody, doesn't understand that Kaiba is a horrible person and no one in their right mind could stand being around him for more than a minute or two, let alone for hours at a time. You'd think he would, what with all the time he's had to spend with him over the last few months.

"I'm really…don't say that so loud, she might have heard you," Yugi says, dropping his voice to a whisper and scanning his periphery with big nervous eyes.

"She's in the bathroom, she didn't hear nothin'."

"Well, someone else might have!"

"I doubt anyone's gonna bother telling her some offhand comment I made. Everybody says stuff like that without it meaning anything."

"Hey Anzu, Jounouchi wants to have sex with you!" Honda says, waving behind his shoulder. Jounouchi and Yugi strain their necks turning too quickly too look at the door, ready to run away from a furious Anzu who turns out to not be there at all. They sigh together and look back at Honda and find him clutching his sides and laughing his head off.

"Why am I friends with you again?" Jounouchi asks. He throws another balled up piece of paper at his face. This one hits him in the forehead.

"Holy crap, Honda! That really scared me," says Yugi.

"Sorry, Yugi, I was only trying to scare him," Honda says, throwing the paper ball back at Jounouchi. It misses completely and rolls under a desk in the back of the room.

"If you're not already in your group, you should get up and meet with them!" the teacher yells from behind her desk. "I told you to do this five minutes ago!"

"Ugh, I should go," Honda gathers his stuff and carries it to the other side of the room where Ohno sits at his desk reading a magazine. He has to wait for the person sitting in the desk he wants to pick up all their crap, which is strewn haphazardly across three studentless desks, and leave before he can sit down. In the mean time he and Jounouchi exchange stupid faces from across the room.

"You should get in your group too," Yugi suggests.

"I'm not going to him. He should come here," Jounouchi responds, pouting and shoving his fists in his pockets.

"I'm sure it won't be that bad."

"What's not gonna be bad?" Anzu, returning from the bathroom, asks. She sits in her desk and reads the assignment sheet for the first time, scowling as her eyes reach the bottom of the page. "Why are we getting a new project on a Thursday? That's totally arbitrary."

"Jounouchi's assigned to work with Kaiba."

"Ha! Good luck with that," she says without looking up, twirling a pen in her fingers.

"Luck's not gonna be good enough," Jounouchi grumbles.

Suddenly a shadow descends upon his desk. Startled, he jerks to attention, expecting either the teacher or Kaiba to be looming over his head, scrutinizing him for one of those things they're always scrutinizing him for. It's Otogi – not his first choice, but certainly preferable to what he expected. "Hey man, what's up," he says.

"Hey. Bakura's not here, right?" Otogi asks. He has a dice in his hand and he's rolling it around delicately in his palm. Half the time the dice isn't visible beneath his fingers, though, so it just looks like he's continuously scratching himself.

"No. Why, you his partner?"

"Yeah, but I guess that doesn't matter right now. You know where he is?"

"Yesterday he said he felt kinda sick at like, the end of the day."

"That sucks, I hope it's not anything serious."

"Probably not."

"Ugh, well it's just as well that I'd be paired with a sick person. I mean, it's worse for him, obviously, but it's still inconvenient, you know?"

"Even if he's sick for the next two months, you're probably gonna get more done with him than I am with Kaiba."

"You could stop whining about it any minute now," Anzu says with a roll of her eyes. Both Yugi and Otogi think this is funny for some reason, and they giggle, the latter more blatantly than the former.

Otogi catches the dice between his index and middle fingers and starts rolling it along his knuckles. "Kaiba? I had to do a project with him in physics once. First 100 percent I ever got in that class," he says.

"Yeah, he'd let _you_ work with him, he doesn't hate you for no reason," Jounouchi groans, refusing to let go of his disappointment.

"I'd say I have plenty of reasons to hate you," Kaiba says, storming over from the front of the room to interrupt their conversation. He stops short at Jounouchi's desk, in exactly the spot Otogi had just been in before he swept nimbly over to the side to avoid being collided into. Cold fury burns in his eyes. Jounouchi raises his fists to his face, bracing himself for whatever's coming. Yugi and Anzu tense up, ready to stop their friend should he try to start a fight. Kaiba raises his hand and beckons for Jounouchi to follow him with two fingers. "Come with me."

Confused, Jounouchi glances at his friends, looking for help. They all seem just as confused as he is, shaking their heads and shrugging and mouthing "I don't know"s and "don't punch him"s. Kaiba waits with his arms firmly at his sides and his eyes locked on Jounouchi's face. He lets thirty seconds pass, then claps his hands twice and says "_Come_."

"Oh come on, that was unnecessary," Anzu says, hearing Jounouchi's chair scrape against the floor and throwing her arm in front of him. "Tell him what you want, don't be rude for no reason."

"Get your lazy ass out of your chair and help me convince Mrs. Maeda to change our assignment," he barks. Jounouchi, reeling from the indignity he is suffering, joins Kaiba reluctantly despite their shared goal. He mumbles a few expletives and slumps over to the teacher's desk.

Mrs. Maeda has her face so close to the table that the two students in front of her can only see the back of her head. Whatever she is reading is only visible to her; only an inch of it is visible past her forehead, and the rest is hidden by her head and her hair. Her right hand scribbles chicken scratches all over a sheet of loose leaf that she most definitely cannot see. It is completely beyond Jounouchi how, despite her complete absorption in what she's doing, she knows she's been approached.

"I already told you, I'm not letting you exchange your partner," she says, her voice slightly muffled by her own face. Kaiba opens his mouth to speak, but doesn't manage to get a word out before Maeda lifts her head and slams her fist down like a gavel. "Don't argue!" she shouts against the metallic wobbling of the desk. "I don't have time to deal with accommodating for every student's petty personal problems! I've got a _job_ to do, I am _busy_!"

Kaiba sighs, flexes his fingers, and delivers his words in a deliberate calm. "With all due respect, I have a significant amount of work to do myself, probably more than you do, and _I_ don't have time to waste performing an impossible task. I will do this with literally anyone else. I know for a fact that I could do this project twice alone faster than I can do it once with him."

Jounouchi looks up at Kaiba in mild admiration, impressed that he could so easily contradict and insult the teacher while still sounding polite. He wants to back him up somehow, and he has plenty to add no doubt, but the look on Maeda's face shuts him up before he can even try to speak. Uninhibited rage seeps from her pores like sweat. Her teeth grind loud enough for him to hear it through her closed lips. Her eyebrow twitches. Jounouchi is intimidated, but Kaiba is unaffected, even though all of this anger is entirely directed at him.

"I have something else I want to talk to you about after class," she tells him. Her tone is one best likened to the tone many an acquaintance of Jounouchi's has used to challenge him to fights after school. "This conversation is over. _Permanently_. Unless Jounouchi has something revelatory to say, both of you return to your seats, _now_."

Jounouchi waves his hands and shakes his head. "No, nothing, sorry to bother you," he says. He adds a nervous laugh that, instead of helping to diffuse the situation, earns him nothing but a sharp glare from Kaiba and a "Good. Sit down," from Maeda. Jounouchi obeys without hesitation, and baffles over Kaiba's reluctance to do the same. He returns to his seat, sits in it, and sighs the most relieved sigh he has in months. His friends, and in fact everyone in the room is likely to have overheard that conversation, as evidenced by Anzu, Yugi and Otogi's bewildered stares. Honda gapes at him from across the room in amazement. No one has ever seen this teacher lose her shit like that.

"Guys?" Jounouchi says, "I think I'm okay with working with Kaiba."

* * *

There you are, chapter one. I hope you liked it. If you have anything to say, go right ahead and leave me a comment, review, opinion, anything. If not, then be on your merry way, and may your journey be uninterrupted.


	2. Chapter 2

Hello, here's the second chapter.

* * *

Thursday Continues

Maeda's history class is the last period of the day, so Kaiba doesn't have to worry about their meeting getting in the way of other classes. For someone like him, however, this is but a small comfort, as he has work to do after school that he is being made late for. With the addition of this stupid project, which of course he's planning to start immediately, and something like an after school meeting, which could take up to forty minutes depending on what it's about, he's going to lose at least four potentially productive hours today on complete bullshit.

Jounouchi tries to leave with everyone else at the sound of the bell, but Kaiba stops him. He doesn't take up a lot of horizontal space, but he still manages to stop him in his tracks by simply standing in front of him. "We're beginning this project today," he says. "Unless you have something else important to do, which I doubt, you're coming to my office to work on it so we can finish it and be done with each other as soon as possible." Jounouchi is not keen on the idea, but he grumbles a reluctant "fine" and plops down into the closest chair to wait. He says goodbye to his friends and stares at the wall with a sour visage. Kaiba lets the room empty before approaching the teacher.

Maeda, busy stacking papers and stowing them under her desk, doesn't say a word until everything's all cleared away. Even then, she makes no noise beyond clearing her throat once or twice and drumming on the table with her fingernails. Kaiba doesn't move a muscle. Kaiba stares directly into her eyes and waits for her to stop fidgeting and tell him what she wants. It takes her a long time, but eventually she settles at the edge of her seat and returns his gaze at full force.

"Kaiba," she says in a commanding voice. "Why did you fire my brother?"

Out of the corner of his eye Kaiba sees Jounouchi perk up slightly, then hastily return to his initial slouch. If this is what she wants to talk about, one would expect that she would have asked that this be a private conversation, but apparently she either doesn't care or doesn't notice, because she makes no move to remove him. She simply clears her throat again and waits for Kaiba's response.

"Uchida Kenichi was the least competent of multiple people with the same position. There was no longer any room for him at Kaiba Corporation, so his employment was terminated," Kaiba explains. "That is who you're talking about, yes?" he asks, just to be certain.

"Yes, Mr. Uchida is my brother," she snarls. "His wife had a lot to say about this that makes it hard for me to believe that that's the only reason." Maeda leans farther over the desk to get her eyes closer to Kaiba's, but only manages to increase the strain involved in looking up at him. Kaiba stands stock still.

"Uchida was so far removed from me that I didn't actually have anything to do with his termination," he says, tsking dismissively. "Your sister-in-law should know that he was fired by their manager, not me."

Maeda is taken aback slightly. She pauses, stammering and spluttering in frustration as she tries to express herself. "You…you…anything that is the fault of your manager is also your own fault! If your manager is doing a bad job, it's your responsibility to fix it!"

"And if one of my lower tier employees is doing a bad job, it's their manager's responsibility to fix it." Kaiba resists the urge to rub his temples; he doesn't want it to be too obvious that he feels like he's talking to a child. This is probably why she refused to compromise on his assignment earlier. She's a child in an adult body, convinced she's being spited simply because something she doesn't approve of what's happening. How self-centered.

Off to the side, Jounouchi is doing his best to seem inconspicuous. He's turned his back to them and absently shuffles through his duel monsters deck, under the pretense that looking at something means you're paying exclusive attention to it. Kaiba is not fooled, but Maeda's attention is fully occupied, which should be good enough for Jounouchi because Kaiba doesn't care if he listens. It's convenient for Kaiba anyway, because the less distracted she is, the sooner this waste of time meeting will end.

"Well, as _your_ superior, I demand you review this case for corruption! My brother was fired over a personal dispute, not out of incompetence or overcrowding!" Considering how flustered she's become, Kaiba is impressed that she hasn't started screaming yet.

"You bring up a good point," he says, pulling a miniature spiral notebook out of his pocket and flipping to an empty page. Maeda's eyes widen and she sits back in her chair. The corners of her lips twitch up into a half smile. Kaiba finds a pen in the leather satchel at his feet and clicks it open. "His wife is Uchida Haruka, right?"

Maeda furrows her eyebrows and pushes her face forward. "Yes. Why?"

"If Uchida's family is generally this troublesome, I should fire his wife as well to avoid unnecessary personal disputes," he says, snapping his notebook closed and clicking his pen shut and shoving them both in his bag. "As for your brother, regardless of how his boss felt about him, his level of productivity leaves no doubt that he _was_ incompetent. He barely got anything done on time. He deserved to be fired."

Immediately Maeda returns to attack mode. "How is he supposed to do well in a crappy job with a crappy boss?" she snaps, standing up and slamming her open palms on the table.

Kaiba smirks venomously and picks up his bag. "I can't accommodate for everyone's petty personal problems. I have a job, I'm busy." Without waiting for a response or dismissal he turns around and heads for the door. Jounouchi hesitates before following him into the hallway, leaving a fuming Maeda alone in her classroom.

Because of Kaiba's head start, Jounouchi has to run a little to catch up. And of course, upon catching up to him he instantly starts criticizing him. "What the hell's your problem?" he yells. When he fails to get a response, he throws an arm in front of Kaiba to try to halt his progress, but he pushes past and keeps on walking at the same brisk pace. "Oi, Kaiba!"

"What do you want, moron?" Kaiba snarls. His smirk has inverted into a frown.

"Why'd you have to do that, huh? She thought you were gonna help her! You could have got back on her good side, then she'd probably separate us like we asked."

"The future of my company is more important than a homework assignment. I wouldn't change what I was doing, and if I lie to her she'll find out about it as soon as it happens."

"Are you seriously gonna fire that woman?" Jounouchi asks, disbelief and disapproval in his voice.

"Yes."

"That's not fair, she didn't do anything."

"I don't care what you think of my business decisions."

"So what? You can't fire someone because her relative pissed you off! That's totally wrong, you friggin' asshole!"

"You're as dumb as a retarded tree if you think I will ever give a shit about your opinions."

Within a few minutes they're outside and in the long courtyard at the entrance of the school, across which is a spotless white car that glares in the sun and makes the sidewalk hard to see from far away. There are no more students hanging around but there are birds in every tree, of which there is an abundant supply, and still more birds on the ground and on the walls and gliding around over there heads. One little flock of pigeons closer to the sidewalk seems to be plagued by a small child running back and forth and kicking at them with his feet. The closer they get to him the clearer it is that he is Mokuba, and it doesn't take long before he notices them too. He throws one last kick at a stray bird, screams "Nii-samaaaa!" and runs over to meet them. Upon reaching him he throws his arms around Kaiba's waist and buries his face in his torso.

"Why are you so late?" he asks, slightly out of breath from running around like a maniac. "Waiting for you is so boring."

"You don't look bored to me," says Kaiba. He picks a feather out of Mokuba's hair and holds it over his forehead. "This is disgusting."

Mokuba's entire face is a bright, happy smile. "It's not my fault, there was a bird living there for two weeks and I didn't notice."

"Mokuba."

"I'm just kidding, geez." Mokuba puts his arms down and steps away from the hug. His smile widens when he sees Jounouchi standing a few feet behind them. "Hi," he says.

"Hey. Mokuba," Jounouchi awkwardly returns the greeting with a puzzled frown, as if doing so will make something go wrong somehow. Utter confusion is so often his expression that Kaiba now associates failure to understand something with being Jounouchi.

"Why's nii-sama hanging out with you? Are you guys friends yet?" Mokuba asks.

Kaiba might have been offended by such a suggestion, but it's Mokuba, so he isn't. "No," he explains. "I'm being forced to do homework with him for a history project. You're going to be seeing a lot of him for the next week or so."

"I got a history project today too! I have to build a diorama and write three paragraphs about whatever it's about."

"That's barely anything."

"I know, right? School is so easy."

"It's also fairly similar to what we're doing."

"Ha ha, you're doing middle school work."

"Well, it's a good thing for Jounouchi, anyway," Kaiba says. Mokuba laughs. Jounouchi clenches his fists. He starts yelling something, but he cuts himself off when Kaiba ignores him and walks away. Mokuba runs to overtake him and then stops to wait for him to catch up; he does this over and over until they reach the car that waits for them on the curb. Jounouchi follows them slowly. By the time he gets there Kaiba and Mokuba are already occupying the back seats, so the only space left for him is in the passenger seat, next to the driver, who has been hiding in the car. The engine revs and the car pulls away, leaving the courtyard empty, save for the birds.

* * *

Comment, favorite, completely forgot you ever saw this and go do something else; do as you like. Just please have a nice time doing it, for me.


End file.
